Hi, I'm Dr. Josh Axe, and welcome to my kitchen.
Today, we're going to be making sweet potato fries, which is one of my favorite recipes.
And sweet potatoes are great for many reasons, but one is, they're packed with vitamins and
minerals.
And actually this orange color you see in the sweet potato means it's full of actually
a phytonutrient called beta-carotene, which actually helps your body in anti-aging, helps
your body in fighting off free radical damage.
So what we're going to do is start off making these sweet potato fries.
So first thing you're going to do with the sweet potato fries is you're going to take
the sweet potato, and you're going to just cut off the ends here.
And then you're going to take this sweet potato, and you're going to cut it right in half,
like so.
Okay?
From there, you're going to cut them one more time right down the middle, like so.
Place them on the ends.
We'll do the same thing with the other half, cutting it in half.
And then now we're going to start cutting them into fry-size little pieces.
And so you're going to take the sweet potatoes here, start cutting them like this, okay,
and you can see.
So that's about the size of a fry.
This one here, though, we're going to cut a little bit smaller.
And then, again, it's all up to you.
Some people actually like potato wedges, so you're fine making them into wedges.
A lot of people like their fries a little bit thinner, and so that choice is up to you
there on how thick you'd like to make the sweet potato fries.
Now that the sweet potatoes are all chopped up and we have them in these fry-like pieces,
we're going to go ahead and start seasoning the sweet potatoes.
But before I do that, I want to talk about some of the other ingredients and also talk
about some of the nutritional benefits of doing the sweet potato fries.
So first, like I said earlier, sweet potatoes are full of beta-carotene and vitamin A, which
is actually helping your body fight off free radical damage, helps your body in anti-aging,
helps fight heart disease, cancer, you name it.
Beta-carotene helps you do it.
Also, it's very high in vitamin B6, which your body needs for energy.
Just from one serving of sweet potatoes, you'll get about 30% of your actual daily intake
needed of vitamin B6 and also very high in fiber.
Every sweet potato has about 7 grams of fiber, and you should be getting anywhere from about
30 to 40 grams of fiber a day.
And so what we're going to do now is start seasoning these sweet potatoes.
And a few of the ingredients we're going to use, one is paprika.
Paprika is actually also full of antioxidant, which gives it its red color.
Also, we're going to do sea salt.
We're going to use Celtic sea salt because it's full of more vitamins, minerals, and
trace minerals.
Specifically it has magnesium, potassium, chloride in there.
And also, we're going to use cinnamon, which is one of my personal favorite spices because
it helps balance out blood sugar levels, helps with diabetes, helps with energy level.
And it's also one of the top two antioxidants on the planet.
And so what we're going to do now is start seasoning the sweet potato fries.
So what we'll do is you'll see here we have a bag already chopped up with these sweet
potatoes.
And basically what we'll do is start taking some sea salt and just dumping that in the
bag here.
Okay?
Just sprinkle it in.
Next thing, we're going to start adding in is the paprika.
So we're just going to douse these sweet potatoes in there.
And once you get them in the pan, you can also throw in a little bit more, if you think
it needs more.
There we go.
And last thing is the cinnamon, which gives it a sweeter taste, which I love throwing
the cinnamon in there.
So we'll throw cinnamon all over these sweet potatoes.
There we go.
Now, what we're going to do is go ahead and add some oil to the sweet potatoes to give
them more of that moist taste and help them cook better.
And what we typically are going to use is grape seed oil or coconut oil, and you can
also use organic butter.
And so if you need to, which most of the time you will with coconut oil, it's actually a
harder texture.
And so is butter, so you'll need to melt those before you put those on the sweet potatoes
fries.
But with grapeseed oil, and you can pick this up at any grocery store, it's actually going
to be in liquid, and so you can actually just pour it in the cup.
And we're going to use about a fourth a cup of oil, and again, I typically use grapeseed
oil or coconut oil.
And the other great thing about these type of oils, like I said, like the grapeseed or
the coconut, is they don't oxidize under heat.
That's one of the dangers of using olive oil.
If the temperature gets too high, it will oxidize and actually become a bad fat.
So we're going to take this fourth a cup of oil here, pour that into the bag here.
And the next thing we're going to do is take the bag and we're going to seal it, and then
we're going to mix it up.
And so we're just going to take the sweet potatoes here, move them around in the bag
with your hands like this.
Just get all of the sea salt, the cinnamon, the paprika, and the oil all mixed up together.
It doesn't have to take too long.
Just mix around here for about 30 seconds, and they're good to go.
And so what you're going to do next is we're going to open this bag, and we're going to
put the sweet potato fries right in a glass bowl.
And you don't have to use glass.
You could also use stainless steel or some sort of metal container.
But we're going to take these sweet potato fries and place them in a glass bowl.
I have them on the bottom of the pan here, and it should look like so.
Now, the next thing you're going to do, or before you actually make the sweet potato
fries, is you're going to set your oven on around 425 degrees.
And we're going to place them in there for about usually around 30 to 45 minutes, and
just check on it.
But I found it in experience, it takes about 40 minutes, depending on the level of crispiness
you like.
I like mine a little bit darker, a little more crispy.
So you're probably going to go the extent of at least 45 minutes in cooking the sweet
potato fries.
The sweet potato fries are now done and ready to serve.
And so what you're going to do is go ahead and just pull them out here.
And we let these cook for about 45 minutes, and we're going to pull them out now.
And you can see, nice crisp sweet potato fries.
And so what you're going to do is take them out, and you're usually go to lay them on
a paper towel and allow some of the oil, some of the grapeseed oil there, to soak out them,
or coconut oil, whichever one you cooked with.
We're going to just place them on a plate like so.
And then what I like to do is take another paper towel and pat over them, too, is another
thing that you can do to get some of it out.
Not totally necessary.
And again, Sweety Sweet Potato Fries are great for a kid's snack.
They're great to pack for lunch in place of your regular McDonald's French fries or soggy
fast food French fries.
And again, very nutritious, tastes great, and you'll love them.
And let us know how you like them.